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How will sea-level rise and other climate impacts affect Miami Beach and Port of Miami in the coming decades? Planners must grapple with these questions now. Photo credit: joiseyshowaa via Flickr Creative Commons

Miami-Dade County, FL, was recently selected as the only U.S. city to be highlighted during a "reality check" session at the upcoming 2010 Resilient Cities Conference. The conference, slated to take place from May 29-31 in Bonn, Germany is being co-hosted by ICLEI, the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, and the City of Bonn, Germany. The Conference aims to bring together academics, practitioners, local governments, and other stakeholders to begin exploring opportunities for advancing the development of effective approaches and methodologies to accelerate local planning around preparing for climate change.

HUD has recently released guidance on how to register to apply for the $100 million Sustainable Communities Planning Grants Program. While the actual Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) will not be released before May 2010, local governments interested in applying for these grants should start this registration process as soon as possible if they wish to compete.

HUD staff are busy working through more than 900 comments with help from EPA and DOT -- all members of the Sustainable Communities Initiative. HUD recently provided guidance for this grant program through a Notice of Opportunity to Register.

Your Next Steps

1. Register at Grants.govThe HUD Notice provides guidance on registration for potential applicants, which ICLEI has summarized here for quick reference. New users will be required to register -- a process that takes two to four weeks to complete. Registration is a five-step sequential process:

Sarasota County, FL, recently launched a Green Map
to allow residents and visitors to find green locations near them, such
as community gardens, farmers markets, green businesses, and solar
energy installations. Simple controls allow the user to decide what
kind of information to display. A visitor wanting to stay in a green
hotel to stay in can use the map to locate participants in the Florida
Department of Environment's Green Lodging Program. Someone who needs to
dispose of old paint can click on the chemical collection button to see
drop-off sites. A person who wants buy a new energy-star refrigerator
can bring up retailers that carry them.

The map also provides
additional visibility to the more than 95 participants in the County's
own Green Business Partnership.
Other layers show parks, natural attractions, Energy Star-qualified
and LEED-certified buildings, and alternative transportation. Sarasota
County created the map by bringing together in one place information
that was already publicly available form a number of sources, and by
adding some data from their own GIS systems. The Sarasota County Green
Map is connected to greenmap.org, which promotes green maps around the world.

Did you miss ICLEI's six-part Green Building Webinar Series, hosted in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council? You can now view free recorded versions of all the webinars.

The series, which ran from February to April, featured staff from leading local governments around the country, including New York, Seattle, Boston, Dallas, and El Paso. Check out the recordings for insights on these cities' green building strategies and programs, and how to replicate their successes. (Click "Read More" to view webinar descriptions and links to play back each webinar.)

City of Westminster, CO is using its Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) funds in a variety of innovative ways within their community. Westminster has been working hard on a number of projects:

Creating a community-wide bicycle master plan

Commercial programs like the Re-Energize Main Street retrofit

Residential energy programs like home energy audits and furnace rebates

Education of the community on the City's adopted 2009 Energy Code and other Green initiatives

In the City of Loveland, CO, Public Works Director Keith Reester has been using Governor’s Energy Office funds in a number of unique ways to make lasting improvements within the community.

Through partnerships with nonprofit organizations in northern Colorado, Loveland is aiding staff from organizations such as Habitat for Humanity in earning LEED AG certification. The City is funding 80 percent of the cost for certification, with NPOs picking up the rest of the tab. Loveland is also aiding Community Planners in the area who are looking to become LEED ND certified. Reester is confident that this opportunity for members of the community to become leaders and further develop expertise in their respective fields will aid the city in its sustainability efforts.

The City is also working on a low-income housing Greenfield project using money from the Governor’s Energy Office. One interesting feature of the project: a geothermal energy system that will reduce utility costs for residents in the area and provide a back-up power source in case of an emergency.

Unique ideas and projects continue to emerge from the City of Loveland to further its Sustainability Action Plan and establish a sustainable thread throughout the community. Want to contact Loveland City staff to learn more? ICLEI member liaisons can use our Peer Networking Tool to look up Keith Reester's contact information.

ICLEI, in partnership with Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and the Environmental Defense Fund, has been working closely with Texas local governments to explore the viability of property-assessed clean energy (PACE) programs in the Lone Star state.

Since the passage of HB 1937 last year in Texas, which included language that enables local governments to establish PACE districts, a substantial amount of due diligence and education has been needed to kick-start PACE programs around the state.

Beginning last November, ICLEI and partners have been organizing and holding meetings for local government staff interested in PACE. The first meeting, held in Austin, was momentous due to the creation of the Texas PACE Partnership, a friendly agreement between local government staff to jointly explore the idea of PACE and share lessons learned. The idea is to dramatically reduce implementation time for interested cities and increase the quality of program design and management. Since that time, meetings have been held in Dallas and Brownsville to spread the word even further. Future meetings are in the works as well. Several local governments already have draft PACE programs in place, and are sharing them with other Partnership members.

Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of PACE, and how your local government can get involved in the Texas PACE Partnership…

In addition to our congratulations, we'd also like to say thanks to
staff from these local governments, who conducted check-in calls with
us in the first quarter. We appreciate your willingness to communicate
what’s
going on in your community -- it gives us that much more of an
opportunity to highlight your success. Click below to view the local government winners and see what Milestones they have achieved...